Britain

The trade union movement should campaign for the abolition of all political-policing units and for genuine democratic community control of policing with transparency and accountability. However, we should have no illusions that the capitalist state is a neutral arbiter is the struggles between workers and young people and the interests of the establishment.

It is time for government to admit that privatisation has failed and to bring the railways back into public ownership, which Corbyn stated would be one of the first acts of a future Labour government. In Northern Ireland, we must resist the creeping privatisation of our public transport, which will lead to cuts and chaos and hit deprived and isolated communities hardest.

The Tory government is hanging on by the finger nails. They are weak, divided on Brexit and bouncing from crisis to crisis. The latest blow saw Amber Rudd forced to step down as Home Secretary in the wake of the Windrush scandal, which saw British Afro-Caribbean people who came to the UK decades ago as children denied benefits and services and even threatened with deportation.

Amber Rudd made an “inadvertent” mistake. That was the ludicrous claim made by the outgoing home secretary in her resignation letter. Families have been pulled apart and cancer patients denied treatment. People have lost homes and jobs. They have had their lives turned upside down and thrown into chaos. All the while, the Home Office has sought to turn the screws, with targets for both increasing and fast-tracking deportations.

Jeremy Corbyn is broadly right and his pro-capitalist critics both within the Tory government and their Labour fifth column in the Parliamentary Labour Party are wrong and lying in their responses to the recent use of nerve agents in Britain.

Rocked by the Brexit vote and then the general election upset, May has at times sought to pretend she empathises with the situation facing ordinary people. The Tories have shamefacedly tried to claim to the title of ‘the party for working people’.

McDonald’s workers in Britain are set to receive their biggest pay increase in over a decade at the end of January, which will see increases of 6.7% across non-franchise stores and some workers receiving £10/hour. The decision comes in the wake of an historic strike of McDonald’s workers in September last year.